


Hyssop and Yarrow

by GrayceAdamsArchive



Category: Milo Murphy's Law
Genre: AU, Canon Divergence, Hanahaki AU, Hanahaki Disease, Happy Ending, Illness, M/M, Near Death Experiences, Pining, Pseudo Science, Sick Fic, Time Travel Shenanigans, Vomiting, duh - Freeform, graphic descriptions of illness, if dwampy wont explain their world dynamics I Will, island of dakotas, mild to explicit gore, non realistic medical stuff, probably unrealistic hospital stuff, self sacrificial tendencies, technically character death but vinnie brings him back, this is a for kicks and giggles au i am putting in the Bare Minimum Effort, unrequited pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-17
Updated: 2017-10-18
Packaged: 2019-01-18 11:58:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12387624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrayceAdamsArchive/pseuds/GrayceAdamsArchive
Summary: Sacrifice and Everlasting Love.The worst part about dying of unrequited love is that he didn't even realize he was in love to begin with. Sure explains a lot, though.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> or, as it was so elegantly put by one of my betas: _(vinnie, face down in a pile of flowers and his own vom)_ ughhhhd ont tell the cops also i love you too
> 
> There are many different flower languages across the world and different sources will give different meanings for different flowers, but for this fic I was inspired by [this post](http://cutiepie-tro.tumblr.com/post/166451057707/vinnie-dakota) which got the flower meanings from [here](https://www.almanac.com/content/flower-meanings-language-flowers).

The first time Cavendish dies, Vinnie can’t even reach the body.

They’re standing on the edge of a cliff, Cav leaning over it to peer down at the pistachio plant clinging to life a dozen feet below. There’s some subpar rappelling equipment in the car, so they can fetch the plant and relocate it to somewhere more conducive to it surviving.

“This is ridiculous, look at it!” Cav blusters, putting his hands on his knees. “One little tree clinging to a cliff in the middle of nowhere—”

Vinnie’s not watching, it’s the only time he’s not watching. There’s the sound of crumbling earth and a panicked yell, and by the time he turns around Cav is just _gone_. A gurgled noise escapes Vinnie as he throws himself forward onto his stomach to peer over the cliff, barely caring if it gives underneath him as well. There’s clouds of disturbed earth drifting up from the canyon below, thousands upon thousands of feet down to the bottom. Vinnie’s glasses slip on the bridge of his nose as he stares down into the abyss, the gentle afternoon breeze ruffling his hair and tugging away the dust Cav has knocked free in his fall to his death.

Vinnie feels sick, his head is spinning, all he can see is red earth drifting in the air and the dark smear at the bottom of the canyon that was once his partner.

“God, oh God, Cav,” Vinnie gasps, brain starting to run at a million miles an hour. He could get the time machine, pop down there immediately as Cav hit the ground, get him to a hospital—

But Cavendish isn’t hurt, he’s _dead_ , there’s no way he survived that fall, and it’s on the very first page of The Time Traveller’s Guidebook in the glove compartment of the time vehicle.

_Your own deaths are not to be interfered with._

But staring over the edge of the cliff, realizing he’s never going to see Cav again, never going to hear his voice, never—

He’s in the time machine before he knows it, fingers fumbling at the keys still in the ignition. It sputters and chokes before he gets it revving, and the silence in the machine is deafening as he yanks it into the time stream and goes back to a few minutes before.

If he ever tells the story of this first time, he might say he hesitated, but that would be a lie. He parks the time machine right next to the first version of it and climbs out. He can see himself and Cavendish by the cliff, only seconds before disaster.

His past self is looking in his direction but hasn’t seen him yet, so Vinnie waves wildly until the past-Vinnie sees him. His eyes widen and Vinnie points desperately at Cavendish, who is leaning down to put his hands on his knees, leaning over the cliff.

Past-Vinnie grabs Cav by the back of his coat and hauls him away from the edge as it crumbles, saving him. They  scramble away from the unstable cliff edge, coughing at the dust they’ve stirred up. Vinnie nearly melts with relief, and the first time machine fizzles out of existence as time heals around it from the change he’s made.

He, nor Past-Vinnie do anything similar though, and he grimaces. Damn, he isn’t sure what to do about that. “I nearly fell! Did you see that? Dakota, did you—” Cavendish is sputtering as Past-Vinnie hauls him to his feet and they start dusting themselves off while Vinnie watches from his hiding place crouched behind the time machine.

“I saw,” Past-Vinnie says, glancing back at Vinnie by the car. Both versions of him know that he’s just violated the first and most important time law, but Vinnie doesn’t care. It was _Cavendish_ , what was he supposed to do, just let him die?

Everything he’s ever learned about time travel screams _yes_ , but that feels so fundamentally _wrong_ , the idea of existing without Cavendish…he could never do that.

Vinnie swallows the urge to cough as he crawls into the back of the time machine, Past-Vinnie distracting Cav until he's hidden. They are the same person, and if Vinnie thinks it would be best to resolve there being two of himself right now at a later time, so does the double.

“That landslide completely destroyed the pistachio plant,” Cavendish gripes as he and Past-Vinnie climb into the front of the time machine to head back to the office in early 21st century Swamp City, and Vinnie hears himself carry on a conversation with Cav on the drive back. It’s eerie, every response he thinks of being voiced aloud, in his voice, but not quite him. A him whose Cavendish died. A him who shouldn’t exist, but still does.

_Your own deaths are not to be interfered with._

He knows it's to prevent people from trying to live forever (for the most part), but it’s also to stop situations like _this_ from happening. You can’t go splitting the timestream all willy-nilly like this, it’s how alternate dimensions come into being, and those always seem to twist into some sort of alien world, or post-apocalyptic horror show.

It’s irresponsible and dangerous and has consequences Vinnie can’t predict or control, but he can’t bring himself to _care_.

“I want curly fries,” he hears Cavendish say as they pop out of the timestream and he smiles.

The time machine comes to a halt as he hears Past-Vinnie say, “Go upstairs, I’ll run and grab us food.”

“Don’t eat it all before you get back,” Cavendish grumbles and Past-Vinnie gives him a sarcastic laugh as he climbs out of the car.

There’s silence as Vinnie sits up from where he was hiding behind the backseat, leaning on the headrest with one arm, watching Cav walk up the stairs to their office on the second floor.

“What happened?” Past-Vinnie asks after a minute, and Vinnie laughs hollowly at the memory of what he’d prevented.

“You can’t guess?”

“Well, yeah, but…” Past-Vinnie pauses, and Vinnie knows he’s thinking about the first law. It’s what Vinnie’s thinking about.

“He died,” Vinnie says, and it’s quiet and weak. “There was nothing—I wasn’t even looking, and then he was just—”

Silence again, pungent and painful.

“I’d ask if you think you made the right choice, but—” Past-Vinnie says, and then they both chorus, “it’s Cavendish, what else would I do?”

Vinnie sighs and puts his forehead on the back of the seat, wondering what the hell to do now. His chest feels tight with emotion, and he coughs trying to loosen the sensation of iron bands around his lungs. The space around his heart tingles, almost tickles, like he’s breathed in too much pollen even though he isn’t really allergic. He coughs again and its two hard bursts that leave his tongue tasting bitter and syrupy.

“So what now?” Past-Vinnie asks.

“We get curly fries,” Vinnie says, and they climb out of the time machine to head for the fast food joint across the street. The cashier barely blinks at the two identical men as they order, and as they wait, Vinnie sits in one of the tiny plastic booths with his double.

“Sooooo,” Past-Vinnie says with a sigh. “I shouldn’t exist.”

“Nope,” Vinnie says, taking a suck from the large soda they’d gotten with their order.

“But I do,” Past-Vinnie pushes his glasses up to rub at his right eye, and Vinnie fights down the urge to do the exact same thing, thinking about what this means.

“Can’t have two of us around, he’d know,” Vinnie says slowly, and Past-Vinnie nods.

“I could maybe find a place to go where he’d never find me?” Past-Vinnie says, pursing his lips. “Maybe find a cozy little island somewhere or something. Retire early.” Vinnie snorts a laugh. He can’t fool himself; it wouldn’t be much of a retirement, all by himself. Not only does he not plan that far ahead, but recent events have revealed that he wouldn’t find it a satisfying end to be without his partner.

“Send me a postcard,” Vinnie says as the cashier comes to the counter with the order, calling their number.

* * *

He gets a postcard a few weeks later, with a brochure, and a picture of an island shot from the deck of a boat on a clear day. There were also instructions to make copies and give them to himself whenever Cavendish dies and he ends up with a duplicate. His heart sinks to his feet as he realizes that there are more of him wherever his first duplicate went, and that this exception is no longer just one.

“I've checked the locker and the fertilizer’s there already, so we can go whenever,” Cavendish says, and Vinnie shoves the papers from the island of more-than-one-Dakota into the pocket inside his jacket, covering the rustle with a cough. His chest convulses and the fake cough he’d started with blooms into a sudden hacking fit that leaves him wheezing and trying to clear copper and a weird flowery sort of perfume aftertaste from his tongue.

“Are you alright, Dakota?” Cavendish asks, clapping him on the shoulder as he struggles to get his breath back. Vinnie nods weakly and gives him a thumbs up as he sucks in a relieving breath. Probably just choked on his own spit or something, that sounds like something he would do.

* * *

He has a stash of brochures for the Island Of More Than A Dozen Dakotas in the bottom drawer of his desk now, and he draws from the stack far more often than he’s comfortable with, but it’s not like he can really make it much _worse_. He’s already long blown past breaking the first law, and after that there isn’t much worse he can do. At least he’s getting a bit numb to watching Cav die. It’s still horrible in the instant, but it’s been awhile since he’s barfed at the sudden surge of memory of Cav floating face down in the water, or falling from a ledge, or tumbling down a hill, or…

Vinnie coughs as they slide out of the time machine to try and prevent the destruction of a cart of pistachios in downtown, and for a couple short heaves it’s fine and then suddenly it’s not. He leans against the front of the time machine, his gut feels tense and locked as his lungs shudder. He can’t seem to pull in a breath, just spit them out in a rough bark of air that makes his chest hurt.

“Dakota!” Cav pounds him on the back like he’s afraid Vinnie is choking and Vinnie manages to suck in a steadying breath from the shock. “Are you alright?” Cav demands and he nods, coughing in small weak bursts in an attempt to clear the thick, painful feeling high in his chest. It feels almost like pins and needles, a static-y sort of pain he shouldn’t be feeling, a sensation that is a little worrying in its wrongness.

“Maybe you should see a doctor for that,” Cavendish says hesitantly as Vinnie finally manages to get upright again, breath audibly rasping.

“Nah, I’m good,” Vinnie manages, and Cavendish frowns at him, but appears to let it go.

A red and white baggie of cough drops is sitting on his desk the next morning though, and Vinnie catches himself just staring at them and rubbing his thumb over the plastic as if he’s lost in thought. Except he’s not really thinking of anything at all, just looking at something Cav had done for him that he hadn’t had to and feeling… _feelings_ about it.

He shoves a handful of the cough drops into his pocket and tucks a new brochure for the island in his jacket before joining Cavendish in the time machine parked outside.

* * *

They’re cherry flavored, and he’s almost constantly got one in his mouth for the next few weeks, still managing to have little fits of wheezing for breath or coughing so hard he has to stop and wait until it passes. A couple missions are failed because he can't breathe or keep up or coughs so hard he broke something and destroyed what they were supposed to be protecting. It upsets Cavendish most of the time, but as Vinnie’s cough persists, he stops complaining about it and instead just frowns at Vinnie really hard. It’s kind of cute.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am 100% bullshitting my way thru the science of the disease. dont think about it too hard.

It’s dark when Vinnie wakes up, hazy through the tinted lenses of his glasses. Spots are dancing around the edges of his vision and it takes him a couple thudding, struggling heartbeats to realize he’s not breathing.

He rolls to the side from where he’s laying on the floor and pounds a fist against his own chest, trying to force his lungs to suck in a breath as he’s launched from the depths of sleep to adrenaline-soaked, panicked awareness.

Vinnie coughs, a wretched, broken sound, like a dog getting its ribcage stomped on. It’s horrible and he barely gets a tiny sip of air into his starving lungs, which light up with pain like a switchboard. Vinnie wheezes out a stillborn groan, clutching at his chest and trying to will air into them. He’s going to suffocate on the office floor and Cavendish is going to find his body and then there will be no one around to save Cav the next time _he_ dies.

Vinnie chokes out something closer to a real cough, and it sounds like a gunshot in the quiet room, waking Cavendish.

“What—who?” Cav sits up suddenly from where he’s been sleeping at his desk, looking around in confusion. His eyes fall on Vinnie after a moment, when Vinnie’s entire form jerks and heaves with the convulsions of his lungs struggling to even function.

“Dakota? _Dakota!_ ” Cavendish scrambles out from behind his desk to kneel next to Vinnie, putting trembling hands on his back and his chest. Vinnie notices, absurdly, that Cavendish’s hands are cold, like he has poor circulation.

Those cold hands grab his wrists and lift his arms above his head, and suddenly Vinnie can breathe at least a little, gasping in enough air to clear the spots from his vision and then _really_ cough, something thick and hot flecking in the back of his throat and his mouth. He gasps and coughs again, wetter, enough that he wants to spit out the bitter fluid coming up. He doesn’t, he’d be spitting right on Cavendish, so instead he just lets his head fall forward, drooling a little as he slowly gets his breath back and under control.

It’s only after a few good, healthy gasps with no hacking involved does he notice that Cavendish is shaking where he’s holding Vinnie’s arms up.

“M’good, Cav,” he mumbles, tugging his wrists down. Cavendish doesn’t let go at first, fingers cold and tight around Vinnie’s wrists as he reluctantly lets Vinnie lower his arms. It’s like he's waiting for Vinnie to start hacking again so he can yank them back up, but it doesn’t happen, and slowly Cavendish lets him go.

Vinnie’s breath is rough and weak as he grimaces and drags his hand over his tongue, trying to remove the little globs of nasty he can feel sticking to it. They’re obviously wet, but not just globs of mucus like he’d thought.

“Get the light, would you?” Vinnie rasps and Cavendish gets up to flick the switch. Vinnie stares into his palm, which is shiny with spit and viscous liquid that’s a little pink with blood. God, he’s coughing up blood.

Blood, and…

Vinnie squints and lifts his glasses a little to get a clear view of the ragged strips of….flower petals? They’re white and purple, dappled with the mess from inside his mouth and throat.

He looks up to see Cavendish is just staring at them as well, mustache drooping as he frowns, a hint of worry in his seaglass colored eyes.

“What have you been _eating_?” Cavendish demands, and Vinnie scowls, wiping his hand on his track pants.

“Not _flowers_!” Vinnie grinds out, throat sore.

“Then how in the _world—_ ?” Cavendish blusters, but Vinnie doesn’t know how to answer him. He doesn’t know how he got _flower petals_ inside him, but it doesn’t bode well. Maybe he’d just inhaled one in his sleep and choked on it.

There were no flowers in the office, but maybe Murphy had been walking near by. It was four in the morning on a school night, but you never knew with that kid.

* * *

Three days later, Cavendish is holding Vinnie’s arms over his head again as his body is wracked with desperate contractions of his lungs and diaphragm, and after it passes he wipes more flower petals and blood onto the palm of his hand, trying to rid his mouth of the perfumed, coppery taste.

“I think we should make a trip to the future,” Cavendish says as he watches Vinnie wipe his hand on some napkins from their lunch earlier. “And the hospital.”

Vinnie shakes his head. He can’t save Cavendish if he's in the hospital, and they're overdue for another freakish accident trying to kill him. Cavendish scowls and tries to press the issue, but Vinnie doesn’t budge.

The next night, however, he’s sitting in his chair filling out his half of the paperwork from the last mission they’d bungled spectacularly when a tickle of pain in his chest makes itself known. He tries to cough gently, just enough to rattle whatever is hurting loose, but the little rumble of a cough he gives quickly turns into a wheeze, and then another hacking fit.

Cavendish is across the room in seconds, ink-splattered fingers grabbing Vinnie’s arms and lifting them above his head. He’s only in his shirt and trousers, a rare state of undress, but it’s been a long day, and most of Cav’s clothes are covered in mud from the tumble down the hill.

“Dakota—” Cavendish tries before being interrupted by Vinnie coughing so hard he sprays his desk with it, speckles of bright crimson and clear fluid darkening to wet spots on papers and wood, a few twisted, wet lumps of flower petals smacking into the surface sickly. “Dakota, I really think we should go have this investigated.” Vinnie coughs again and feels something… _poke_ him in the back of his throat, sharp and bending slightly as he gurgles and manages to get it to _not_ lodge in his airway to choke him. He spits it out as he slumps forward, wheezing but able to breathe again. When Cavendish lets him lower his arms again, he gingerly picks the object up to inspect it, and finds a twisted little branch, curled and broken, with some sad, wrinkled flowers clinging to the stems.

“Yeah,” Vinnie rasps finally, staring at the bit of _plant_ he’s just coughed up. “Okay. That’s probably something we should do.” Cavendish nods firmly and puts his shoes back on to follow Vinnie down to the time machine. Cavendish insists on driving as usual, and Vinnie hopes he doesn’t drive the thing right into a wall again; he’s pretty sure that’d be a coughing fit he might not live through.

* * *

Cavendish parks the time machine after only a mild fender-bender with a stop sign, which Vinnie pushes upright once more when Cavendish backs the time machine off of it. It’s a short walk to the hospital, though they take it slow because Vinnie’s still wheezing a little. He’s got the little bit of flower bush he hacked up in one hand, wondering if the hospital will even believe him when he says he thinks it’s growing inside him.

Even in the future, hospitals are a hassle, and Vinnie spends ten minutes filling out paperwork and then four hours sitting in the waiting room with Cavendish.

Every time he so much as breathes out with too much force, he can feel petals and blood bubbling at the back of his throat, and he clears it a few times trying to quell the sensation. He fills one of Cavendish’s spare handkerchiefs with petals and spots of blood.

He’s finally called back, and Cavendish is hot on his heels as the nurse stops them at the door into the rest of the hospital.

“Family only,” she says to them, and Vinnie wants to protest, but there’s not really anything he can say. _Co-workers_ don’t usually get to come see why you’re coughing up blood, no matter how well you get along.

“I’ll just,” Cavendish says stiffly after a minute, nodding toward the waiting room again, “be here then, I suppose.”

“Sounds good,” Vinnie says because he can’t think of what else to say that wouldn’t sound even more stupid. The nurse puts a hand on his upper back as she leads him through the doors, and Vinnie wonders what sort of news he’ll be bringing back to Cavendish.

* * *

They put him in a hospital gown, which he wants to say is entirely unnecessary, but after the endoscopy, anal cavity exam, and x-rays, he can’t really deny that it is.

“So, uh,” Vinnie tries to sound light and unconcerned as the doctor moves her stethoscope over his back, listening to him breathe with a frown on her face. “Any idea why I might be spitting out flower petals?” He gestures at the little branch of flowers he’d brought with him, and the doctor sighs, pulling the stethoscope out of her ears.

“We already know what’s wrong,” she says, voice smooth and calm but deeply pitying. She’s pretty enough, but the pity in her voice is more than enough to turn Vinnie’s attention far, far away from flirting like he usually would, trying to make light of a bad situation.

“You have hanahaki disease,” she says, picking up a clipboard off the counter and flipping over a few pages. She leans over to flick a switch that brings the x-ray film viewer to life. She taps the screen a couple times and his file comes up and opens, spreading black and white images of his x-rays.

“Hana-huh?” he says, peering up at the x-rays through his glasses. There’s something white and bulbous in the tops of his lungs around his heart, like someone spilled a bottle of ink on the picture.

“Hanahaki,” the doctor says, swiping at the screen to drag the various images along. “It’s very, very rare. So rare we can’t really say when or where you picked it up from, since it can lie dormant in your system for years, from before you were born even, if your mother was infected and passed it to you.”

“Uh,” Dakota says, rubbing at his jaw as she pulls up a shot of his upper chest. The entire upper half of his lungs are full of something twisted and thick. No wonder he’s nearly suffocating on a regular basis. “So, uh, do I need surgery, or—?”

“No, unfortunately… once you’re infected, there’s not really anything we can do, medically,” she says, and there’s that pity again. “Hanahaki is triggered into action by high levels of dopamine, adrenaline, and norepinephrine over a period of time, when you’re not producing much serotonin. Or at least, that’s the current theory.” Vinnie doesn’t really understand all of that, so he just stares until her pitying look shifts into resignation.

“Hanahaki disease only occurs in people who are very deeply in love,” she says, setting her clipboard back down. “It’s a disease that sprouts wherever the infection has spread to in your body—in your case, your lungs— and then begins to grow and flower until it kills you.”

“And there’s no…stopping it,” Vinnie asks weakly, trying to wrap his head around the idea that he basically had plant-flavored love-cancer. “No medication, no treatment, no cure…?”

“Well, the disease doesn’t respond well to surges of serotonin, which often occur when one’s affections are…reciprocated,” the doctor says, folding her hands in front of herself as she speaks. “It causes the infection to break down and die, and is thus why it hasn’t infected everyone in love and killed everybody. Our understanding of the disease is foggy at best, since it occurs so rarely. Even with research through the Time Bureau we don’t really know much about it.

“What we do know, though, is that unless you fall out of love and stop helping the disease grow, or your feelings are returned, causing a change in your chemistry that will certainly kill it…” she pauses, pursing her lips, looking away.

“What,” Vinnie asks, and it’s hardly a question, because he can feel it, in the unpleasant, tight tingling sensation in his chest.

“You’re going to die,” she says quietly. “In about three or four weeks. I’m very sorry.”


	3. Chapter 3

They finally let him put his pants back on, and give him a few little informational pamphlets that have pictures of red and yellow carnations on them. They’re still warm from the printer and a little hastily folded, but he glances numbly over the information inside them as the doctor writes him a prescription for the pain and an excuse note for when he gets too sick to work. The little bullet points of facts and statistics tell him little other than that he’s probably the first person to be sick with hanahaki disease in at least a few decades, and that it’s often debated whether the disease is extinct or not yet because there are such long stretches of time between instances of the illness. That his brain has to be producing a unique combination of hormones to trigger the disease into attacking his system, hormones that mean he’s deeply in love and it isn’t mutual.

“As a time traveler you know that the main timestream, while ever-shifting, isn’t usually changed much around instances of death,” the doctor says, handing him a Future iPad that has the records of his death in about four weeks’ time pulled up on it. A small picture of his funeral is in the file, and he’s not surprised to see the attendees are sparse, though Brick and Savannah are going to actually be there.

Cavendish is in the front of the photo, standing by Vinnie’s coffin and clutching his hat instead of any flowers.

“Better get my affairs in order, then,” Vinnie jokes as he shrugs his jacket back on. He can feel it when he moves his arms, it’s easier to breathe when they’re above his head, opening his airways. From the x-rays the disease is either going to choke him to death or grow until it punctures his heart and causes a fatal attack, and he has to resist rolling his eyes at the irony. All in all, finding out he’s dying has lacked the sort of rush of emotion one would expect.

No, what’s really got his head ringing with the aftereffects of shocking news is being informed he’s in _love_.

The doctor leaves him alone to collect himself before departing the hospital that can’t cure him despite all the miracles of future science, and Vinnie finds himself leaning against the edge of the hospital bed. There’s a buzzing sensation in between his ears, like he’s been clocked around the head harder than strictly necessary.

You’d think being so in love you can’t live without someone is an emotion he’d _notice_ having.

* * *

Cavendish is still waiting when Vinnie finally reemerges from the hospital, and looks like he’s barely moved since he wasn’t allowed to follow him back. He springs to his feet like an over-wound jack-in-the-box toy as soon as he sees Vinnie, clutching his hat in his hands.

It’s sickeningly reminiscent of the photo that will be taken in a month’s time, but still manages to be endearing, since his expression is one of tightly-controlled worry rather than the slack, empty expression from the picture.

“What—” Cavendish begins as soon as Vinnie’s close enough, but Vinnie quickly lifts a hand to stop him. Cavendish falls silent, and Vinnie opens his mouth to speak, to tell him, to say anything, even if it’s a joke Cavendish will turn pink at from the impropriety.

But nothing comes out. Vinnie stands there with his mouth open and his hand up like he’s waiting for a high-five, and the moment stretches into a minute of painful silence. Vinnie swallows and weakly curls his fingers into a fist before lowering it to his side.

_I’m in love, and it’s literally killing me. It’s okay, I didn’t know either._

Quite the bomb to drop in the hospital waiting room, surrounded by strangers.

“Dakota—” Cavendish begins, hesitant, hand reaching for Vinnie’s sleeve and hovering between his elbow and his shoulder before withdrawing again. Vinnie wishes Cavendish would touch him, it might ground him and halt the floating, weak feeling consuming him.

“Let’s go back,” Vinnie says, meaning _let’s go home._

Cavendish looks like he wants to protest, shifting his weight, fingers dancing nervously along the brim of his hat.

“Bal, please,” Vinnie mumbles after a minute, reaching up to grab Cav’s wrist and convey just how suddenly _tired_ he is.

“Of course,” Cavendish says after a second, his posture relaxing marginally as he puts his hand over Vinnie’s fingers. His long, thin digits feel cool and only shake a little.

Vinnie gives him a grateful smile and they leave the hospital and get in the time machine to return to their office. They have quarters here in the future, at TBHQ, but they’re rarely used since the dorm-like set up makes them even more cramped than the tiny office they keep in Swamp City. Hardly the place for privacy.

The trip there is quiet, except when Vinnie starts coughing as they enter the timestream, hacking until he spits petals and spots of blood into his palm. Four weeks.

He sighs, thinking about the suddenly ticking clock that had never mattered before because he was a _time traveler;_ hopping around in the timestream makes one’s grip on linear time a little slippery. The sigh comes out like a rattle, something you’d hear from a chainsmoker of forty years letting out their latest puff.

Cav’s hands pale visibly where he’s holding the steering wheel, and Vinnie wonders if the sound he’d made was just that unpleasant, or if Cavendish knows Vinnie’s dying.

* * *

Vinnie watches Cavendish busy himself at the little rickety table by the locker that holds their basket of instant coffees and teas next to a little plug-in electric burner to heat water in a battered kettle. Cavendish hasn’t looked at him since they left the hospital, and Vinnie pushes down the thought that the worst part of dying is Cav bracing for the loss by distancing himself.

Vinnie sits in his chair as Cavendish watches water sit and heat up rather than face him. He leans back and puts his feet on his desk, putting his hands behind his head. It’s easier to breathe like that, even though he can still feel the tingling-tightness of pain high in his chest with every inhale. There’s silence except the quiet rumble of the kettle heating up, and after a few minutes Vinnie closes his eyes, assuming they’re just not going to talk about it. He doesn’t really want to talk about it. It’d be better if they didn’t, if he died without ever laying the burden of his feelings and his related sickness and fast-approaching death at Cavendish’s feet.

“How long?”

The question startles Vinnie out of his thoughts, but he barely twitches, holding himself perfectly still. The question isn’t exact, Cavendish could mean _how long have you been ill_ or _how much longer are you going to need until you tell me_ but Vinnie knows. He knows Cavendish is asking neither of those things.

_How long do you have left?_

Vinnie doesn’t bother to open his eyes, just lets out the breath he’s been holding, with a lick of his dry lips that taste like bile and pollen. He’s been tasting it for a few months now, the syrupy aftertaste from the hanahaki taking root in his lungs and its blossoms obstructing his airways.

“Checking the current time stream, I’ll be dead in a month,” Vinnie says, and it’s flat and matter-of-fact. He doesn’t want Cavendish to know exactly how much he’s feeling about everything wrong with his life right now. “My funeral’s real nice, but you don’t bring me any flowers.”

Cavendish curses and there’s the rattle of him fumbling with the kettle. Vinnie cracks open an eye to see Cavendish is staring at the peeling, water-damaged wallpaper in front of him, cheeks pale and facial hair twitching. His hand is red and blotchy where he’s apparently burned himself with the kettle, but it doesn’t look bad. Vinnie shuts his eyes again, and the office falls into the kind of painful silence it only suffers when Cavendish has died and Vinnie hasn’t gone back to save his life yet. He only tried that once. He’d barely lasted fifteen minutes.

“We could…change it,” Cavendish rasps, low and soft. “Go back, before you—before, and change it—stop this from ever happening at all—”

Vinnie almost falls out of his chair at that, but gets his balance and instead just falls forward so the chair’s on all four legs again and his feet hit the floor. Vinnie puts one hand over his face, trying so hard to keep it together.

Of course Cav would suggest that. Of course he’d suggest breaking the first rule in the handbook Vinnie’s sure he’s read at least four times by now, the book Vinnie tossed completely out the window months ago. Of course. It’s almost enough to give Vinnie hope, foolish as it is.

But Vinnie already knows that road, knows it’s faulty and dangerous. At least with Cavendish he always knows exactly when and how things go wrong. With this…Vinnie might have gotten sick last year, or ten years ago, or been sick his entire life. It’d take months of trial and error, be in direct violation of Bureau law, and it might not even _work_. They could even accidentally erase Vinnie from existence if they tried to stop him from ever getting ill in the first place.

“You know why we can’t do that,” Vinnie says, and he’s watching Cavendish, who still won’t look at him, who’s glaring at the wall like it might hold the secrets to curing Vinnie’s illness and it’s being stubborn about providing them.  After a second he seems to give up, shoulders slumping as he braces his hands on the table like it’s all that’s holding him up.

“It’s hanahaki,” Vinnie says softly, and it takes a minute for Cavendish to understand. Vinnie’s surprised he knows what it is at all.

“The…flowers,” he says, head shooting up with hope. “You’re in love! You’re in love?” Cavendish finally turns to look at him, face scrunched with confusion and…hurt?

“Apparently,” Vinnie says, turning his chair to face Cavendish and putting his arms back behind his head as he starts to cough. It wards off a fit and he watches Cavendish’s brain starts whirling in that gray head of his.

“Then we just—we go and, and stop you from falling in love! Stop you from ever meeting her!” Cavendish is halfway to the door and presumably the time machine, and then Vinnie does fall out of his chair, but this time it’s because he’s laughing.

The laughing turns into a coughing fit, and his vision goes gray for a minute as he grips the edge of his desk. He clutches at his chest as he struggles to breathe around the growth in his chest, spattering the carpet with dark, ominous droplets. He feels Cav’s hands on him, grabbing his shoulder, the back of his neck as he fights to get his breath back.

“M’okay,” Vinnie grunts, and Cavendish makes a _harrumph_ sort of noise as he gets up to fetch Vinnie a drink of water. Vinnie wipes his mouth and tongue on his sleeve, grimacing as he scrapes globulus bits of plant matter and petals from his palette. The purple and white petals are black and red with blood, a sign of the disease burrowing into the bronchi of his lungs. Vinnie wonders if he might die drowning in his own blood before the hanahaki has a chance to kill him directly.

“We can…we can stop this,” Cavendish whispers as he kneels in front of Vinnie, watching him sip carefully at the paper cup.

“Nah,” Vinnie says as he drops the empty cup in the wastebasket by his desk. Cavendish looks mildly devastated at the unusually tidy gesture, like the one time Vinnie’s remembered not to throw his garbage just in the general direction of the trash is more disturbing than his usual disregard for cleanliness. “I don’t wanna do that. Who do you even think I’m in love with?”

“Savannah, of course,” Cavendish says, his tone suggesting he’s offended Vinnie thinks he didn’t know.

Cavendish _doesn’t_ know, he’s not even close, and Vinnie almost loses it again because he knows who it is in his life he couldn’t possibly live without, and it’s not _Savannah_.


	4. Chapter 4

“I’m driving,” Vinnie says, and Cavendish blinks, then frowns, opening his mouth to protest. “You don’t even know when we’re going. I’m driving.” Cavendish purses his lips behind his mustache and then nods. 

He insists on another cup of water for Vinnie though, and sips a cup of tea for himself as they sit in silence. It’s the sort of silence that usually occupies the space when they’re both in it: natural and amicable, just the quiet of two people soaking up time in the other’s presence while they still can. The water tastes coppery and like someone spritzed perfume into it, testament to the mess his insides are. 

* * *

The timestream is free of clocks, and Vinnie almost misses their familiar ticking as he hesitates over the time machine’s controls. Cavendish huffs impatiently in the passenger seat, and Vinnie rolls his eyes. 

“Hey, gimme a minute here, I’m trying to remember when I first had feelings,” Vinnie explains, adjusting a couple settings and trying to decide when to go that would be best. 

Vinnie feels a little stupid, looking back. He thinks about how he couldn’t seem to stop grinning at Cavendish after they met, about how he often spent time he should have been sleeping instead just watching the rise and fall of Cavendish’s back as he dreamed. Not really grand gestures of love, though. Maybe all the aborted touches, the longing and desperation, that time he’d taken advantage of a rare bit of privacy and…no, that was too embarrassing. This is going to be rough enough already, he doesn’t need to make it worse by scarring Cavendish for life. 

Vinnie thinks about all the times he’s saved Cavendish, how he’s sacrificed endless timelines with not a thought for the consequences, just to keep him in Vinnie’s life. But it seems a bit extreme to make Cavendish witness his own death, and that’s such a tangled bag of overlapping timestreams he could tear a hole in time and space, so it’s probably not worth it anyway. 

“Well?” Cavendish demands after a few minutes, looking irritated and a little blotchy with emotion. Vinnie wonders why. 

He pushes the button while looking Cavendish full in the face, wondering when it’s going to take them when the only intent he has behind it is the beginning. 

They drop out of the timestream in front of Time Bureau HQ, and the sign out front for everyone’s convenience says it’s almost two years ago in the midmorning. 

“Well, here we are,” Vinnie says, wondering how dumb he actually is, since the time machine could hardly have taken the beginning more literally. Cavendish is frowning as they climb the steps to the Bureau building, and they take a break halfway up them because Vinnie starts to wheeze so hard a bit of blood and spit starts leaking at the corners of his mouth. Various agents and other personnel of the Bureau pass them back and forth and pay them no mind. After he recovers they finish the trip up the stairs and enter the building. 

The atrium of the Time Bureau looks the same as it always does, glossy floors and big windows, people dressed for every era of humanity walking around with scatterings of people in the black and red uniform every time traveler had outside of period garb. 

Vinnie, feeling a little out of breath, leans against one of the sweeping pillars by the front doors, and that’s when he sees them. 

They’re standing by the front desk, both of them, him and Cavendish. They’re in line, a few people between them. Cavendish is fidgeting with the sleeves of his Bureau uniform, tugging nervously at them as he waits to speak with the desk attendant. There’s a couple agents and an intern in line behind him, and then there’s Vinnie. The collar of his uniform is undone and his sunglasses and golden chain are both against dress code, and he’s taking a big bite of what Vinnie leaning by the pillar remembers is a breakfast burrito. It’d been cold when he’d been the one eating it, leftovers from the previous day. He remembers looking up at the sound of Cavendish’s fussy voice ahead of him in line, and finding everything to do with Cavendish amusing. 

“I’d like to speak to Mr. Block, please,” says the Cavendish leaning over the counter to talk to the attendant behind it. 

“This is—” the Cavendish standing beside Vinnie says. 

“Yeah,” Vinnie confirms, watching the desk attendant summon Mr. Block from his office to talk to Cavendish. Mr. Block looks as he always does, for as long as Vinnie’s known him. He wonders how much time traveling Block’s done to appear so divorced from time, not visibly aging much, if at all, in the years since he’d joined the Bureau. 

Past-Cavendish is speaking too low for Vinnie to hear him from across the atrium, but he remembers pausing in his morning meal to listen. He watches his past self lift his head to look toward Cavendish and Block, who’s turning more purple the longer Cavendish talks. 

“You were so ready to go save the world,” Vinnie says with a smile as Block gives a humorless laugh. 

“Stopping World War Four? Please, you’re not worth something of that caliber, let alone on your own,” Block’s voice rings around the atrium, and both Vinnies wince at the pallor past-Cavendish’s face takes at the condescending tone. 

“I feel as though my skills could be put to better use than sitting in meetings taking notes about what other people are doing,” Cavendish says, and there’s a pregnant pause before he adds, “sir.” Vinnie snorts, as does his past self, which catches Block’s attention. 

“Is that so,” Block drolls out, not fooling anyone with his flat delivery. “You know what, sure, Callenvitch, I’ll give you a mission, even a partner! You can work with Dakota here.” Block waves his hand at where past-Vinnie has frozen in surprise, cheeks bulging with a large bit of burrito. “I’m sure the two you will work your way up the mission list very quickly.” Past-Cavendish starts sputtering protests immediately while Vinnie watches his past self try not to choke on his burrito. He doesn’t even remember what he’d been in line for. He gets lost in thought for a second, trying to remember, but is startled out of his thoughts by Block’s voice again. 

“Obviously you do end up partners, since your dumb asses are standing over there right now!” 

Vinnie’s attention returns to the moment to see himself and Past-Cavendish staring over at where he and Cav are standing by the pillar, watching. Vinnie remembers his then-future self had shot him a wink and he does it, realizing he only had because he remembered seeing himself do it and that all the time wondering why he had, had been wasted. 

It’d been the first time they’d seen other versions of themselves here at the Time Bureau, but not the last. It was the one place in the timestream where they’re legally allowed to be multiple versions of themselves, since they can’t help but visit the Bureau over the course of their careers. They weren’t supposed to interact though, so after a brief acknowledgment of their mutual existence, their past selves had turned back to Mr. Block. Vinnie watches them all bicker for a minute before Block just walks away to escape them, and he smiles as he watches himself and past-Cavendish walk away talking. 

And then he wants to smack himself in the forehead as he watches past-Vinnie walk right into Brick, smacking into his chest and smearing his breakfast burrito all over the front of his crisp tuxedo. 

“Oh, I see,” says the Cavendish behind him, and Vinnie puts his face in his hands, because now Cavendish thinks he’s in love with  _ Brick  _ of all people. 

“No,” Vinnie says, pushing himself off the pillar to look at Cavendish. He’s frowning, and his eyes are the color of blue-green stained glass, and he’s so painfully oblivious. Vinnie wants to tell him. 

He takes a breath and it snags, catches in his lungs like razor wire, and he starts coughing. 

Cavendish puts an arm around his shoulders, touch hesitant and then a little desperate, like if he doesn’t hold on tight enough Vinnie will disappear into thin air. They sit on the steps outside until Vinnie gets his breath back, holding one of Cavendish’s handkerchiefs to his lips. It’s stained pink and brown with his blood by the time he’s able to suck in air without choking on it, and he tucks it into the pocket on the inside of his jacket. His fingers brush the pamphlet he carries with him to give to his extra selves when Cavendish dies. 

“You didn’t stop yourself from meeting him,” Cavendish says after a minute, staring down at the time machine at the bottom of the steps. 

“No,” Vinnie confirms with a small smile, letting himself imagine that the glare Cavendish is leveling at the steps is because he’s jealous. It’s an indulgent thought, one he usually wouldn’t have allowed to manifest, but he’s really too far gone to be in denial about it anymore. He loves Cavendish so much it’s going to kill him, and he would never be able to trade knowing him for a longer life without him. He knows it’d somehow feel hollow. 

“Why?” Cavendish asks, and Vinnie doesn’t have to ponder it, but Cav doesn’t really give him the chance to, continuing on, “He’s never going to…to love you, Dakota. He doesn’t even like you. Why didn’t you just…stop it?” 

Vinnie doesn’t say anything, just gets up and descends the steps to the time machine waiting for them. Cavendish is blotchy with whatever he’s struggling with again, cheeks ruddy and eyes starting to look a little red-rimmed like he wants to cry. 

Vinnie puts them back in the timestream and lets out a breath he feels like he’s been holding in forever. 

“Because you died.” 


	5. Chapter 5

Cavendish makes an aborted little noise and then manages to gurgle, “Excuse me?” like Vinnie’s started swearing violently at him.

Vinnie doesn’t repeat himself, he can’t, and he knows Cavendish heard him.

“I don’t—what do you—” Cavendish tries again, and it’s Vinnie’s turn for his knuckles to turn pale on the steering wheel. He mashes down the button on the dash to drop them out of the timestream, and the time machine lands in sand with a harsh thud.

Warm, humid sunlight streams in through the windows, and Vinnie blinks rapidly to adjust to the sudden change in ambiance.

“When— _where_ are we?” Cavendish asks, popping open his door to lean out and look around.

Vinnie’s never seen it in person before, but the island is just as beautiful as it looks in the picture in his pocket. Everything is lush and green and loud, insects and animals creating the hum of noise most jungles rarely disturbed by humans produce.

“Somewhere in the South Pacific,” Vinnie says, pulling out the brochure and checking the instructions inside. He skips everything pre-getting-to-the-island and notes that he’s just supposed to walk toward the volcano and eventually he’ll find the others.

“Why are we on a deserted island in the South Pacific?” Cavendish scrambles to follow Vinnie as he starts walking toward the towering mountain in the middle of the island. Their progress is slow, and Vinnie has to take frequent breaks to lock his fingers behind his head and just breathe, breathe around the blood bubbling in the back of his throat.

It’s about twenty minutes of trekking before they come across their first Other Dakota.

He’s barefoot and in just the track pants, missing the jacket and vest alike.

“Oh,” he says when he sees Vinnie, and then “oh, no,” when he sees Cavendish.

“Dakota,” Cavendish says, staring at the double who definitely looks like he’s been living on the island for a while. His skin is dark with sun and his hair’s been bleached by it, and his glasses have a crack in one lens.

“Yup,” the Other Dakota says, glancing between Vinnie and Cavendish.

“Dakota?” Cavendish says, turning to Vinnie uncertainly. “What’s…going on?”

“I told you,” Vinnie says, putting his hands into his pockets and not looking at him.

“You died,” says other Dakota, curling his hand into a fist and smacking it into the other. “Ker-splat. At least, that’s what the Dakota that came after me told me. We don’t get to see the ones that send us here, since, y’know, we stop them from happening.”

“Stop them from… _we_ —!” Cavendish’s face flushes almost puce, and Vinnie sighs, grabbing his wrist to pull him along as the Other Dakota leads them to where the others are.

“Dakota, Dakota, stop, tell me—” Cavendish gasps as they emerge from the jungle into a cleared space where the Dakotas have settled.

There are dozens of them, and Vinnie can’t tell if there are more or less as many as he’s saved Cav so far.

“Oh God,” Cavendish says, staring at all the Dakotas in front of him, who are all noticing him and staring back, nudging at each other. “And for every one of you…you’ve prevented me dying.”

Vinnie nods, and the other Dakotas are murmuring and discussing what could have made him bring Cavendish here, and Vinnie’s so tired.

“Dakota, this is—this is _serious_ breach of time law, this is—this is _huge_ , I’ve—you—” Cavendish sputters, clearly overwhelmed as he takes in the Dakotas in front of him, one for every time he’s died, one for every time Vinnie has decided he’s more important than his career, his life, _everything_. Vinnie wonders if he finally gets it, or if he’s really going to have to just say it out loud. He doesn’t want to say it out loud. It feels like it’ll be too much.

“Dakota… _why?_ ” Cavendish asks, weak and helpless and so very confused. Like he can’t fathom the reason behind this endless, massive sacrifice on his behalf.

“C’mon, Cav,” Vinnie says with a weak laugh. “It’s you.” Cav gapes at him, and Vinnie smiles bitterly. “I couldn’t…you were just _gone_. And I couldn’t. So I went back, and changed it. And changed it again. Every time.”

“Then why won’t you change _this?_ ” Cav cried, gesturing at where he’s standing, and he knows Cavendish means the disease.

“Because if I can’t lose you to death, then I’m _definitely_ not going to lose you to never meeting you in the first place,” Vinnie says, and all the color drains from Cavendish’s face. He looks like Vinnie’s punched him in the stomach, and he lifts a hand like he wants to make a point that’s escaping him.

“You can’t possibly have hanahaki,” Cavendish spits out after a second, looking a cross between furious and devastated.

“And why’s that?” Vinnie asks, feeling a tad amused but mostly just resigned. If Cavendish didn’t want to believe Vinnie was in love with him, well, there wasn’t a lot more he could do to prove it to him.

“Because it’s only for _unrequited_ love, you incredibly dense lug!” Cavendish shrills, and he’s blushing, all rosy cheeks and shining eyes, embarrassed and angry and beautiful.

It takes a second to sink in, Vinnie staring at Cavendish who’s glaring at him like he’s made a terrible pun for the third time. The Dakotas are all staring at them, and Vinnie’s heart feels like it’s swelling in his chest—

And then Vinnie lurches forward and blows chunks all over Cavendish’s shoes.

At least, it feels sort of like throwing up. It comes out of his throat and mouth and even his nose, and it burns, but it’s not coming from his stomach. He can’t breathe, every time he hauls in a gasp it bubbles and burns, and when he breathes out it’s wet and comes out in splatters and splashes of liquid. He coughs and everything that bursts out of his mouth is black and red, and he heaves and hacks until he’s pretty sure he’s going to die anyway. His chest burns as the growth in his chest is suddenly being expelled (or at least, he hopes that’s what’s happening), forced up his windpipe and out of his body. His chest contracts and heaves and he falls to his hands and knees with the force of it. Cav doesn’t jump back in disgust or even surprise, he’s quickly crowding closer, trying to help, yelling for the other Dakotas to help.

Vinnie grabs Cav’s arm in an attempt not to fall face first into his own disgusting mess, and something thick and scratchy is forcing itself out of his throat and into his mouth. He spits it out onto the ground, and does that a few more times, thick mouthfuls of sticky flowers coated in blood and mucus and tissue ripped from inside him. His breathing is labored and agonizing, he’s pretty sure he’s bleeding internally from the sudden purge of the diseased growth, but the tingling pain is _gone_ , and suddenly Vinnie’s able to loose a sigh of relief.

“Dakota—Dakota, I—” Cavendish’s fingers are a relief against his skin as he lifts Vinnie’s face, trying to make him look at him. “Are you alright? Are you cured? I don’t—”

“I think you need to take me back to the hospital now,” Vinnie rasps, and he feels the blood in his mouth drip out of his lips like he’s been swishing around a mouthful of it and is just letting it dribble everywhere for kicks. Cavendish is horrifically pale now and he nods frantically, helping Vinnie to his feet.

“You’re parked on the south beach, come on,” one of the Other Dakotas says, leading them back into the jungle.

“Why aren’t all of you sick?” Cavendish asks as he wraps Vinnie’s arm around his shoulders and his own around Vinnie’s waist to half-lift him and help him hurry through the undergrowth.

“Well. All our Cavendishes are dead,” Other Dakota says after a few moment’s thought. “We still…” he clears his throat awkwardly, painfully, like he’s poked at a healing wound. “But it’s like. Distant. Because we’re not him.” He gestures at Vinnie, who grunts and wonders if it’s worse to swallow his own blood or to let it spill out of his mouth all over the ground whenever an exhale bubbles up more of it. His stomach feels sick, it’s starting to remind him of the time he’d nearly drowned trying to prevent Cavendish from doing the same.

Other Dakota yanks the passenger door open for the time machine and helps Cavendish settle Vinnie in the seat, and then Cav is climbing into the driver’s side to start it up. Cavendish fumbles with the keys, the engine sputters.

“You’re flooding it,” Vinnie mumbles, dripping blood from his lips to the seat which stains in thick brown splotches.

“I’m not flooding it!” Cavendish snaps automatically and the time machine jumps into the time stream with a start.

There’s the eerie, bluish light of the timestream and Cav is hitting buttons rapidly to calibrate them for the right time period and place, and Vinnie doesn’t even notice slipping off into unconsciousness.

* * *

The heart monitor beeps steadily, the loudest sound in the small, curtained area, and Vinnie quickly deduces he’s in the hospital from the quiet sounds coming from beyond the privacy curtain drawn around the bed he’s lying in. He’s got tubes and electrodes stuck to him, and a breathing tube through his nose. Vinnie takes a hesitant breath, and for the first time in months, it’s easy. He’s _sore_ , he feels like he’s had bronchitis or something, but he can breathe. He sighs long and relieved, just because he can.

There’s a quiet snore from his right, and Vinnie carefully turns his head to see that Cavendish is sitting in the guest chair next to him, head tilted back against the wall behind him as he dozes next to some inactive equipment. He’s missing his ruined shoes and socks, his legs crossed at the bare ankles, and Vinnie can _breathe_ , because Cavendish loves him back.

Vinnie just stares at him for a minute, drinking in the knowledge, the feeling, and when he’s had his fill of that and wants _more_ , he carefully starts shuffling in the bed so he can turn on his side. It’s a little awkward and difficult since he’s got needles and pads stuck to both arms, his chest, and his neck, but eventually he manages to get on his side facing Cavendish, and he’s able to extend his right arm far enough to lace his fingers through Cavendish’s limp ones. His hand is thin and cooler than Vinnie’s, but they curl reflexively around his as Vinnie squeezes Cav’s palm a little, not enough to wake him, just enough to feel the pressure of it.

It’s nice. Super nice. Vinnie’s entire being almost melts into the bed from how nice it is. He never wants to let go.

So he doesn’t, and he’s still holding Cav’s hand when he slips back into sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's it y'all! hopefully it was a fun ride! thank you for all your lovely comments im treasuring each and every one ;u; 
> 
>  
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> [Here's a fun fanart Papaya did inspired by this fic (vomiting cw)!](https://doofdaily.tumblr.com/post/166457806945/vomit-t-emetophobia-t-the-best-part-of)


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